Hints and thoughts about Management, Strategies, Team Building, Admin, basics, Trends, the Future and other topics.

Sunday, 4 December 2011

Social media a faux pas danger or advertising possibility

In the last years social media has become a way of “normal people to express themselves on the internet. Before you had to use forums, where mostly other people set the order of the day. Today you have a number of possibilities like blogs, twitter, facebook and now also google+

Modern websites needs to keep up with these new media by adding interaction to them like +1 and like buttons to allow you communicate directly with the people, = potential customers, that interact on these site.

Many new and smaller businesses do take it up. It is probably easier to organize if you don’t have to go through several layers of corporate bureaucrazy for a decision to use the media to be made. It also takes somebody with an interest, yes nearly a passion for it, to keep up with the constant changes needed. The modern web is about constantly changing content and interaction. No longer is it enough with a single page with your product and contact details. The more you interact the better your site will be responded to and the more potential customers will know about you.

More established companies are more afraid of what it can do to their current reputation than what potential it brings with it. Some companies insist that no should be done by anyone that isn’t authorised, meaning the company spokesperson or the ceo him/herself. In the day of the social media that person just becomes 1 though. So even with a powerful voice and a lot of resources behind them they will have problem reaching as wide as the whole companies thousands of employees could.

Instead of trying to stop this potential, one should look into better ways of spreading the word in a controlled fashion. In a way it has been tried in the past where sample, companies would invite their employees to vote for them in award competitions. And I don’t just mean “employer of the year”.

The company that don’t follow the customer risk being left behind. For some years the way of advertising n the internet was with email campaigns or advertisements placed on webpages like or internet search engines like Google. Now even large companies consider stopping using emails, switching to other forms of communication. There is speak of a move from search engines to social sites like Facebook, which could be one reason Google has shown interest with it’s +

In the internet age we move fast and newcomers can quickly become the established for so to be overtaken again. They who don’t follow can easily be left behind. Ignore at your peril.